Category: Sonic Youth

On June 7, we’ll be reissuing Sonic Youth’s ‘Battery Park, NYC: July 4, 2008’. Initially sold as a bonus item alongside the 2009 release of the band’s final album, ‘The Eternal’, the live recording will now be available on streaming services and as a stand-alone physical package for the first time ever. Culled from their show at Battery Park’s River To River Festival (and broadcast live on WFMU), the setlist spans the band’s 30-year career.

The live version of “Bull In The Heather” is now available to stream HERE.

Coinciding with the full release of the live album on June 7th, ‘The Eternal’ will be 25% off on the Matador Store from that date to June 14th.

Orders from the Matador Store include a Matador Records Revisionist History Slipmat (while supplies last).

Body/Head, the duo of Kim Gordon (CKM, Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, etc.) and Bill Nace (X.O.4, Vampire Belt, Ceylon Mange, etc.) will be releasing their new record, ‘No Waves’, on November 11th. The live record documents a single show (Big Ears Festival in 2014 in Knoxville, TN) from a band renowned for clearing pathways of possibility using great waves of amplification and voice.

Body/Head’s debut release for Matador Records, ‘Coming Apart’, was arguably the heaviest record of 2013 and received with open arms and blown minds across the world. The fact that a record steeped so heavily in non-traditional structures and improvisation could touch so many people was not a surprise to anyone who had seen Body/Head in a live setting. No Waves captures that raw improvisation and harnesses the power into a listening experience of pure, unmediated intensity.

The fire of improvisation is not the fire of the elements. Body/Head deal in electricity, but they exist in the fire of improvisation. As such, they need to play live to sustain themselves. Call it the ontological necessity of a band working heavily with the flow of power (power flowing back and forth between the members of the band, flowing through band and audience, flowing through the mental and material planes, etc). ‘No Waves’, a document of this flow of power, offers a different side of the band they revealed on ‘Coming Apart’. Yes, some of the songs cross over in undefinable ways, but the live foundation of No Waves brings all new energies to the fore. Everything reveals itself in the now.

One of the pleasures of a live record is a chance for the listener to feel the music develop and unfold from a previously known departure point. This experience is magnified with Body/Head due to the improvisatory basis of the band, which encourages new sounds and modes of communication with every show. We hear new vocal melodies developing, new attacks on strings, new clusters of intervals. It is the sound of sound evolving. Listening to No Waves, one can’t help feel that despite the title of their previous record, ‘Coming Apart’, we’re actually hearing Kim and Bill become one. Guitars and vocals flow into each as if played by a single creature. The sound of their evolution causes audiomorphic sensations. Two guitars or eight? Four hands or one? One voice or two?

The live record also plays with orientation via it’s concentration on communication. Which way are you listening to it? Listen once and hear certain forms. Listen to the same part again and you may perceive new forms, like overhearing a game of telephone. With ‘No Waves’, Body/Head adds a document to the library of classic live records that never exhaust themselves no matter how many times they are listened to. Musicians and groups such as Albert Ayler, High Rise, Van Morrison, Rudolph Grey, Bill Evens, Swans, etc. knew the unique possibilities of a live record that invites participation from the listener. It’s the beauty of a path cleared at the moment it was recorded and for every moment to come. It’s Body/Head doing what they do best – making the listener smile as they participate with the band in joyous, creative time. The Élan vital never rocked so hard. – Ben Chasny

Earlier this morning, NPR Music premiered “Murdered Out”, the first single by Kim Gordon issued under her own name, recorded with producer Justin Raisen and Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa. The following are Kim’s words on the subject :

Black matte spray.

When I moved back to LA I noticed more and more cars painted with black matte spray, tinted windows, blackened logos, and black wheels. This was something I had occasionally seen in the past, part of low-rider car culture. A reclaiming of a corporate symbol of American success, The Car, from an outsider’s point of view. A statement-making rejection of the shiny brand new look, the idea of a new start, the promise of power, and the freedom on the open road. Like an option on a voting ballot, “none of the above.”

“Murdered Out,” as a look, is now creeping into mainstream culture as a design trend. A coffee brand. A clothing line. A nail polish color.

Black-on-black matte is the ultimate expression in digging out, getting rid of, purging the soul. Like a black hole, the supreme inward look, a culture collapsing in on itself, the outsider as an unwilling participant as the “It” look.

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I met the uber talented Justin Raisen, the producer, offhandedly. He was working on a project with another artist and kept sending me tracks to listen to with the possibility of getting me to sing on one of them. When I learned I could make up my own lyrics, I was in. With the remaining bits of unused vocals, he started what would be “Murdered Out.” Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint) plays drums, based on the trashy drums that Justin first laid down. I went back and did more vocals and guitar and we mixed it…”Murdered Out” was such a great surprise! Looking forward to our next collaboration.

Just a reminder the duo of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace, aka Body/Head (shown above) are playing at the Hollywood Palladium tonight prior to the reunited Sleater-Kinney (tickets). Beloved-by-some revivalist Ian Rubbish plays first of three.

This autumn, while crisscrossing America in support of ‘The Best Day’, the Thurston Moore Band (TM, James Sedwards, Deb Googe, Steve Shelley) stopped by Seattle’s KEXP and recorded a 4-song session for the extremely well organized/popular broadcaster. Though I could provide you with links to all four of the individual songs, there’s search engines for that kind of thing and besides, you wanna watch the whole thing.

(studio version found on ‘Between The Time & The Tides’ ; shot on the streets of Stoa Eboron for “Stray Songs”, a series of web videos featuring bands and musicians playing live in the city of Athens).

Today marks 10 years since the passing of John Peel, a man who opened the BBC radio airwaves for bands and artists outside the remit of the stations “regular” programming and opened the minds of thousands listening at home to sounds they otherwise may have never heard. One of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, throughout his 5-decade spanning career he never showed no signs of slowing down and his influence on (the good part) of modern music is immeasurable.

As a small tribute to the many Matador bands who recorded a Peel Session over the years, we’ve compiled a selection of some of the session that made it on to YouTube, (many – including The Fall, Wisdom Of Harry and Pretty Girls Make Graves – haven’t) and there’s a full archive of all the Peel sessions over at the BBC Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/.

Just a reminder – the new Thurston Moore album, ‘The Best Day’, proclaimed by the A/V Club’s Chris Mincher to be “a palpably invigorated blend of brawny, sprawling guitar rock and meditative arrangements” is available today throughout North America (everywhere else yesterday) — direct order details and updated tour dates are found below.

Thurston Moore’s new album, ‘The Best Day’ hits shelves throughout Europe today (North America tomorrow), touted yesterday by The Observer’s Kitty Empire as “a madeleine of a record” (“both comforting and discomfiting, ‘The Best Day’ recalls prime Sonic Youth, when their tense experimental attitude dovetailed with often sour but instantly accessible pop melodies”) and with that, here’s a video for the monumental “Speak To The Wild”, directed by Santiago Mostyn.

“I have the image of a character, a woman who could be a mother (slightly older, slightly wilder, like a silent Jenny Wilson) carrying a large and alien precious object into the forest and sequestering it there. It would be a narrative trajectory but with sublime interruptions – the cavity where she stashes the object filling with gold, painted figures following her through the trees, DIY-Kurosawa style.” – Santiago Mostyn

The Thurston Moore Band will be in session later this afternoon on WNYC‘s “Soundcheck” ; listen here at 2pm eastern.

We’re less than a month from the release of Thurston Moore’s new album, ‘The Best Day’, and accordingly, Thurston’s in NYC all week with the label breathing down his neck about any number of promotional schemes. Fortunately, he’s doing interesting stuff, too, and tonight (6pm) you can see a solo set from Thurston on the courtyard steps of MoMA PS1 as part of the opening night festivities for the New York Art Book Fair.

At 7pm, Thurston will be in the lobby at Printed Matter’s booth signing editions of the new chapbook of lyrics ‘The Best Day’, published by Ecstatic Peace Library, and ‘Non Stop Poetry’, a comprehensive publication chronicling over 145 zines by Mark Gonzales.

Preorder ‘The Best Day’ from the following :

The Matador Store (autographed posters with the first 100 LP orders)iTunes (receive the song, “The Best Day” instantly)Amazon (receive the song, “The Best Day” instantly)

“While the members of The Dust are scattered to the four winds for a little while, I’m undertaking a solo acoustic tour in Europe. The plan is to play selections from the two albums, some covers and hopefully some of the new songs I’m currently working on, and to play them as most of them originated – on acoustic guitars, in stripped down style. Guitar and voice, little or no fuzz. Anyway that’s the plan right now, this will be a further ‘acoustic experiment’ for me. We’ve sought out small capacity, intimate venues with good acoustics for these shows. Hope to see some of you along the way.”

On October 21, Matador will be releasing the latest solo album from Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore, ‘The Best Day’. Recorded in London with his new band — featuring guitarist James Sedwards (Nøught), bassist Deb Googe (My Bloody Valentine) and SY drummer Steve Shelley, ‘The Best Day’ is a staggeringly confident, expansive work, one that not only rivals much of Moore’s past work, but also suggests his relocation to England has inspired a creative rebirth of sorts. Keep in mind, we’re already dealing with one of the harder working, prolific characters in modern music, rock or otherwise.

The newly dubbed Thurston Moore Band will be playing dates in Europe, UK, and North America, including Riot Fest in Denver, Chicago and Toronto as well as a West coast run with Sebadoh (all dates are below).

The Best Day Track Listing:
1. Speak To The Wild
2. Forevermore
3. Tape
4. The Best Day
5. Vocabularies
6. Grace Lake
7. Germs Burn

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust — confusingly enough, shown above performing at another radio station a few months ago — can be heard today on Brian Turner’s WFMU program from a session recorded this past Saturday afternoon in beautiful Jersey City.